and talk about it….

Ditch the script, sweetie

So, here I am, feeling a lecture coming out of me. Or a cranky old lady rant? Or some common sense?

You decide.

As you may (or may not) remember, I am an html/css specialist. Javascript is for interactions. That’s my philosophy. You click on something, you do whatever you need to do on the back end, add a state class to a DOM element, and use CSS to handle the rest. Like hiding/showing/transitioning.

Lately, at work, I’ve been given designs that are impossible to realize using just CSS. But because I’m anal about not using script for layout, I try my darndest to make it work that way, first. Trying everything I know, googling for ideas, trying new things.

Sometimes I get up A LOT from my desk to take a walk. That’s what happens when my mind is stretched. It needs a lot of clearing.

I tell designers that this is not good. But they see these kind of designs out in the wild. (Thanks a lot Pinterest and Google+ and all the rest of you – you know who you are.) So my arguments don’t hold up. And other developers are on board, too. We can do this, yes we can! It’s a mindset of being up for a challenge. I love a good challenge myself. But not at the expense of compromising the code.

Has anybody ever thought about these things….?

If we create designs that are easy to code, we would be done with web UI in a fraction of the time.

If we create designs that are easy to code, it would cost way less money to develop and maintain them.

If we create designs that are easy to code, we have code that is really solid, and less error prone.

If we create designs that are easy to code, our code would be more lightweight, loading faster, which is important for mobile.

Plus web-friendly designs leave more time to make sites responsive, animated (not over-animated), and to focus on content, which is king.